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<\/p>\nWilliam (Bill) Marvin Greathouse passed from this life to the next Thursday evening, March 24. Bill was a giant of a leader and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene.<\/p>\n
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A recently published biography on Greathouse, Crucified with Christ: The Life and Ministry of William Marvin Greathouse<\/em>, offers a nice summary of his life and accomplishments. Bill was a pastor, college president, seminary president, general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene, and inspiring theologian.<\/p>\n For several years, Bill has been expecting to pass on to glory. In our conversations, he often talked about his failing health and physical difficulties. He was ready to go home.<\/p>\n Upon hearing of his home going, I flipped through some old emails exchanges. And I pulled down some of his books from my shelves. Many of us in the theological academy owe a great deal to Bill’s personal and intellectual influence.<\/p>\n Of his books, his little tome, Love Made Perfect<\/em>, is probably my favorite. We both believed love to be the center of holiness and the Christian life. His writing style comes across like an inspirational sermon.<\/p>\n “If thine eye be single – singly fixed on God and heaven, thy whole soul will be full of holiness and happiness.”<\/p>\n Bill Greathouse lived a life fixed on God. And now he enjoys the complete happiness of heaven.<\/p>\n Hallelujah!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (Photo: Diane Leclerc, William Greathouse, Rob Staples, Thomas Jay Oord)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" William (Bill) Marvin Greathouse passed from this life to the next Thursday evening, March 24. Bill was a giant of a leader and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7254],"yst_prominent_words":[1268,1337,1838,2317,2694,2699,2700,2701,2702,2703,2704],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john_wesley_holiness_and_the_church_of_the_nazarene","tag-william-greathouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/panel_11.jpg\")
I was struck when I took down the book by the inscription he had written to me. After a few comments of encouragement, he wrote these words from John Wesley:<\/p>\n